ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A Sandia National Laboratories-led team has for the first time used optics rather than electronics to switch a nanometer-thick thin film device from completely dark to completely transparent, or light, at a speed of trillionths of a second. The team led by principal investigator Igal Brener published a Nature Photonics paper this […]
Category Archives: Nanotechnology
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Nanotechnology experts at Sandia create first terahertz-speed polarization optical switch
September 14, 2017 – 5:00 am
Beating the heat with nanoparticle films
August 31, 2017 – 8:25 am
House and car windows that stay cool in the summer, warm in the winter ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — It is a truth acknowledged throughout much of the world, that a car sitting in the sun on a summer’s day must be sweltering. However, a partnership between Sandia National Laboratories and Santa Fe, New Mexico-based IR Dynamics […]
Clean water that’s ‘just right’ with Sandia sensor solution
July 11, 2017 – 5:15 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Water utilities have a Goldilocks problem: If they don’t add enough chlorine, nasty bacteria that cause typhoid and cholera survive the purification process. Too much chlorine produces disinfection byproducts such as chloroform, which increase cancer risks. The amount of chlorine needs to be “just right” for safe drinking water. The Environmental Protection […]
Better living through pressure: functional nanomaterials made easy
April 18, 2017 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Using pressure instead of chemicals, a Sandia National Laboratories team has fabricated nanoparticles into nanowire-array structures similar to those that underlie the surfaces of touch-screens for sensors, computers, phones and TVs. The pressure-based fabrication process takes nanoseconds. Chemistry-based industrial techniques take hours. The process, called stress-induced fabrication, “is a new technology that […]
Guiding Light: Sandia creates 3-D metasurfaces with optical possibilities
March 9, 2017 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Metamaterials don’t exist in nature, but their ability to make ultra-thin lenses and ultra-efficient cell phone antennas, bend light to keep satellites cooler and let photovoltaics absorb more energy mean they offer a world of possibilities. Formed by nanostructures that act as “atoms,” arranged on a substrate to alter light’s path in […]
Nanotechnology manager elected president of Materials Research Society
November 11, 2016 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Senior manager Sean Hearne, who leads the Center of Integrated Nanotechnology (CINT) group for Sandia National Laboratories, has been elected president of the Materials Research Society. MRS is an international organization that promotes interdisciplinary materials research with 15,000 members from academia, industry and national labs. Hearne will serve as vice president beginning […]
Diamonds Aren’t Forever: Sandia, Harvard team create first quantum computer bridge
October 14, 2016 – 12:30 pm
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — By forcefully embedding two silicon atoms in a diamond matrix, Sandia researchers have demonstrated for the first time on a single chip all the components needed to create a quantum bridge to link quantum computers together. “People have already built small quantum computers,” says Sandia researcher Ryan Camacho. “Maybe the first useful […]
Nanophotonics researcher at Sandia named IEEE Outstanding Young Professional
September 22, 2016 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories researcher Salvatore Campione has been awarded the 2016 Outstanding Young Professional Award by IEEE honor society Eta Kappa Nu (IEEE-HKN). A researcher of nanophotonics and metamaterials, with special expertise in periodic structures, leaky-wave antennas and electromagnetic theory, Campione was recognized by the society “for his contributions to the electromagnetic […]
Sandia storing information securely in DNA
July 11, 2016 – 7:25 am
Sandia researchers explore a biologically inspired information storage system ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider generate 15 million gigabytes of data per year. That is a lot of digital data to inscribe on hard drives or beam up to the “cloud.” George Bachand, a Sandia National Laboratories bioengineer at the Center for […]
World’s fastest multiframe digital X-ray camera created at Sandia
June 2, 2016 – 11:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — An adversary who steps inside a boxer’s sense of rhythm may land a punch the boxer never saw coming. A similar problem faces physicists struggling to achieve laboratory-scale nuclear fusion: A rogue event occurring between successively monitored images may knock an otherwise promising experiment off-kilter without anyone seeing the cause. To narrow […]